Looker is the future of data exploration, visualization and reporting.
August 18, 2015
Looker is the future of data exploration, visualization and reporting.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Looker
Looker is being used across the entire organization to surface relevant data that helps teams make data-driven decisions on a daily basis. Looker serves as a "single source of truth" when it comes to data, and helps strategic discussions stay focused and data rich. The platform is used for tracking of new/ongoing initiatives, as well as day-to-day operational performance.
- Joining multiple tables. They call this "symmetric aggregates." Basically, you can join tons of tables together, and only have to specify the type of join (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many) for each join, and Looker takes care of the rest -- no more fan out problems!
- Data modeling -- LookML is pretty easy to learn, and it's super powerful. Every type of calculated dimension or measure, especially dates, are handled with ease.
- Visualization customization -- Looker is constantly releasing new versions, and the area where I'd like to see improvements is in more advanced visualizaion. Reference lines, trend lines, etc.
- GoodData,Domo,Birst,Sisense,Tableau Server
Looker's modeling capabilities (especially dealing with symmetric aggregates), as well as the platform's accessibility to both basic users and technical users, makes it a slam dunk. There is no "black box," where you end up not being able to trust the data -- you can follow the information through from source to graph, and fully understand all transformations along the way.